Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/107

 'Should we not wait for the others?'

'No. Miss Bigley got them off all piled up in the other sleigh half an hour ago. Ripley told me he had put you in here. I thought you would be so kind as to wait for me.'

'Oh, of course,' she said quickly.

'And I've told the driver to make a turn up Washington Street. I do hope I am not inconveniencing you.'

'Oh, no. No.'

A dark, inscrutable silence lapsed between them which perhaps he did not care to break and which Lanice could not. Her heart had unaccountably sunken when she had seen Jones bow his head and enter the hack, shaking the snowflakes from him. Now it was beating fast and high up within her, and she was afraid he might hear it. Tardily she remembered that she had not said one word about the lecture, but found it hard to express what she felt. The words sounded stilted and labored. He accepted her praise good-naturedly, but as if it meant nothing to him, and again the darkness and the silence pressed upon them. Once he drew the bear rugs up about her and, leaning towards her, frankly inhaled with delight the rosy fragrance of her garments. The strong, odd perfume had puzzled and slightly embarrassed the New England girl. She murmured an apology.

'Good God!' he exclaimed, almost with irritation and none of his usual diffidence, 'that perfume is one of the wonders of the world. Not Arab, of course—there's nothing subtle about the Arab nose—but